Lightspeed

The game's premise is that the player must help recolonize the human race after the Earth's habitability is critically reduced by an ecological catastrophe. The entire human race is presently housed in huge Conestoga-class colony ships, which are waiting for the player to secure at least one planet with an Earth-like environment and to also acquire enough material resources to ensure that the colony or colonies in question can build a flegling industrial base as soon as possible. The player's time to accomplish this goal is limited. In addition, the player must contend with the alien races living in the area that the player is exploring. The mission's success requires diplomacy to acquire allies and the elimination of races that may be potentially hostile to humanity. The player may also deem it nessessary to destory a friendly race in order to secure enougth resources to successfully complete his or her objectives.

Spaceflight is similar in style to the Wing Commander or X-Wing titles. Most races initially adopt a neutral stance towards the player, unless they ambush the player in between star systems. The player can then choose to attack or hold their fire, which can influence future relations with that species. The player-controlable vehicles consist of the main Trailblazer-class cruiser (top left screenshot on box back) and small spacecraft chassis that can be quickly reconfigured for three different roles (that of a space superiority fighter, a powerful guided kamikaze missile with poor maneuverability or a weak unguided homing missile with excellent maneuverability). The player can also launch a escape pod when their Trailblazer is hopelessly crippled. The Trailblazer is also equiped with unguided probes that are used to initiate communications with neutral or friendly species.

In addition, the Trailblazer is also equipped with a fast moving turret with which to shoot down lightly armored fighter craft. While this weapon (along with the weapons equipped on a figher-varient chassis) cannot penerate captial ship armor, the Trailblazer is also equipped with a powerful front-mounted main gun to deal with larger threats. Guided missiles and kamikaze craft can also damage capital ships. Interestingly, some aliens are equiped with shield generators that can negate main gun attacks. However, these generators are vulnerable to fighter and turret fire, as they are attached to the exterior of the ship. The shield component, along with certain weapon turrets, can be targeted by precision fire - a revolutionary feature for the time. This also ensures that no one weapon system becomes redundant at any point during the course of a game.

As an interesting and innovative gameplay element, the Trailblazer cruiser could could only be crippled and not destroyed. The ship also contained a view the ship's engine room, which allows the player to enhance the ship's performance by upgrading or replacing the ship's components. The engine room is split into various areas including the Spindrive FTL engine, main cannon, sublight engine, turret, and deflector shielding. These components can be destroyed in battle or by the use of the Emergency Spindrive function in order to retreat from battle and head to a safer star system to recoup and repair. If the Spindrive is running without additional components its fuel efficiency could drop to the point that it could become impossible to reach a friendly base to re-equip without running out of fuel. In this situation, the player would be forced to use the escape pod and return to main base for a replacement Trailblazer. This however would cost precious mission time.

The game gives the player the option to choose one of two star clusters in which to play in. The Hyades cluster is the easier of the two, while the Cerberus cluster offers a challenge for expert players. One can also engage in practice ship-to-ship combat from the main menu, or can elect to view a 3D gallery of all the ships in the game.